How many truly active 68k Amiga users are there in the world. People who actually regularly spend money on hardware and/or software?
Ill venture a guess. I say somewhere about 2000 and 3000? Any counter bids?
Lets assume a new OS version selling at €30 would sell about 2000 units. That's €60000
Realistically, a major new version would be released every 5 years.
So maybe in 10 years you'd sell two copies per active user.
Throw in some Euros for ROM updates.. You max out at maybe €150000.
1 full time dev during 10 years would cost twice as much. So 50% part time developer or 1 cheap one tops.
It doesnt exactly look like a cash cow to me.
If id make a bid for the source it would be in that ballpark.

That's the amount raised for the A1200 molds by less than 1000 ppl so I wouldn't say its impossible.

The real challenge is to pull the heads out of the source owner's asses and to sort out the bizzare and tragic legal situation.

Thanks for the reality check by talking numbers (even if just a rough estimate), effectively bringing relatively small businesses down from their Amiga delusions of grandeur, or whatever reason they have for starting the announcement with 'Brussels, October 13, 2016'.

I really dont understand the problem with announcements in a semi "professional" manner, even if its just for a retro/hobby platform.
Hyperion is getting constant flak for not giving out information, and once they do, they get shit for that too. Same goes for AEONkit.

Yes, I found the changelog for the OS 3.1 quite lackluster, but if Olaf and ssolies indication that they plan futher updates, I could not be more positive to that fact. I dont understand why people cry bloody murder for them asking for peanuts for a update. Everyone here can read changelogs, and if its not sufficient for you to be bothered with purchasing it, then dont. Wait for the next update. Noone is forcing you at gunpoint to whip out the creditcard.

As far as people spending money on minor updates;
I purchased Cloanto WB 3.1 from Amigakit last year, and ive had plenty of use for it so far. Ive never owned that version before (had 1.3 and 3.0), and while I know I easily could find pirated versions of it on the internetz, I love to have providers that have soft/hardware readily available to returning users (like I was).
Each time I stop at a gas station I pick up junkfood that cost me more than they are asking for 3.1 versions, and Im not yelling at the clerk for that.
And then you have the argument that people that pay for current WB strains effectivly ruins any chance of progress. here has been very little progress since I left the platform in the 90s, so not sure what people is talking about.
(btw; i love the BB patches, so thanks to those that contributes to make them!).

I really dont understand the problem with announcements in a semi "professional" manner, even if its just for a retro/hobby platform.
Hyperion is getting constant flak for not giving out information, and once they do, they get shit for that too.

The offensive part is taking the classic AmigaOS 3.1 source code, which should have been in the hands of the community decades ago, then rebrand it with their company name after some minor tweaks and updates, and finally announcing the whole ordeal as a faceless corporation who cares only about profits.

The offensive part is taking the classic AmigaOS 3.1 source code, which should have been in the hands of the community decades ago, then rebrand it with their company name after some minor tweaks and updates, and finally announcing the whole ordeal as a faceless corporation who cares only about profits.

Is this how you treat fellow enthusiasts in a community?

The source is now in the hands of the community, so people has the option to make the real chances you are cheering for (I havent looked at the source, since Im no coder). Lets hold our breath while waiting for the avalanche of updates that will come of it!

And correct me if Im wrong; people have had ample time to make patches to the system, like Cosmos and the BB crew.

Yes Overflow, it's true, people do have the physical right to make those changes, because the source leaked. But you won't see people like Olaf working on it, and you won't see good things happening on GitHub or other public development venues, until the intellectual property rights are finished off once and for all.

There are countless examples of so-called Internet "takedowns", where enthusiast projects have sprung up on the Internet with *perhaps* questionable legality, and all it took was a threat to get them to stop. This disgusts me on two levels, that the threat would be made, and that the threat would be taken seriously. Nevertheless, what we want is every person who is willing to work on AmigaOS, working on it. We don't need a further division between those who will work on what they see as "illegal code" and those who will.

"Each time I stop at a gas station I pick up junkfood that cost me more than they are asking for..."

and one day u will get piece of sh... instead of junk food and then will u pay again ?
So u r funny guy

Point is; we spend more money on trivial things on day to day basis, than Hyperion is asking for this.
Am I purchasing this version? Probably not since I have 3.1 already, but that doesnt change the underlying point.

It is at least mildly offensive, but bear in mind that the organization in question is simply a small group of people performing a role that they themselves see as justified, if not necessary. I don't lay the blame at the feet of individual greed. There are some who, I am sorry to say, are simply too old and fixed to concretely understand certain ideas. They may not even see themselves as community stewards, as you suggest. For them it may simply be a personal hobby which happens to have legal structure and a trickle of revenue.

There remain a few options:

1. Do nothing and continue bitching ad infinitum.

2. Remember our pirate roots, raise the middle finger high, and proceed with AmigaOS development based on the "leaked" 3.1 sources. This is a beautiful thing, but you will lose a significant number of potential developers in the mix, and you won't be able to do all the comfortable and nice things mentioned in my "GitHub User Story". Also remember that, in this case, certain people will continue paying to legitimize a proprietary approach.

3. Get an answer to the simple question, "Who actually owns AmigaOS?", And proceed, step-by-step, to liberate this motherfucker once and for all, enabling an environment where hundreds of developers can contribute their ideas to the hobby in an open, public manner that is immune to takedown requests and other tomfoolery.

As you can see, unless people en masse snap out of the hallucinationatory grip of intellectual property law, the only possible options are #1, and #3. And I am seriously sick to death of #1 already.

Point is; we spend more money on trivial things on day to day basis, than Hyperion is asking for this.
Am I purchasing this version? Probably not since I have 3.1 already, but that doesnt change the underlying point.

Here is the underlying point: What is needed -- what everyone here actually wants, whether they realize it or not -- is the liberation of AmigaOS from any centralized ownership. And because each purchase helps to justify a proprietary business case for it, each purchase also makes the cost of liberating AmigaOS that much higher. It really cannot be any simpler.

I have no objection to your nr 3 point, but until the reality with copyright maze in Amigaland changes, there is no point crying bloody murder like many do.

I just shrug and look at the product infront of me; will it improve my current setup? Yes. Well, then; since nothing has changed for 20+ years; ill take it.
Is that the perfect solution? As you say; NO, but currently it is what it is.

And to your last point. Sounds nice, but saying "liberation" wont make it happen by magic. I dont disagree with you, it just seems like a discussion Ive seen going on for decades.

Yes I can see why it might have gone on for decades, since we're already 6 pages into this thread and no one has even attempted to answer the first question, which will allow us to take the first step.

It begins to look to me as though the ownership reality is actually unclear for everyone, including even Hyperion... Which tells me that the most effective way to find out who the real owners are, may be to actually get legally served (by hosting AmigaOS sources), and then challenge it, so that the structure is made crystal clear.

To successfully be served with a takedown request that I can challenge, I presumably need to host the sources in a DMCA-free country, via a host that won't automatically take action without consulting me. In other words, I need a host that will cooperate with my investigation.

I would appreciate some suggestions about this. A pirate-friendly host in Sweden or Iceland seems like a good starting point, but it should also not be seen as to have such a deaf ear to intellectual property that the notice won't even be sent.

Wow, this has certainly got people talking... I think it was here that I recently saw someone asking where they could get a legit workbench disk. I wonder how many people there are that would be interested in this that don't currently participate in forums such as this, that do a search on google for "workbench disk" and give up because they get put off by the way things are today.

As someone who has only recently come back to the Amiga after years away, I found I had to dedicate some time to the task. Things have changed from back in the day when I had several places I could purchase what I needed from, and I didn't have to worry about exceeding hard disk size limitations, as a CD, with 650Mb of space, was regarded as a "large, slow, read only hard-disk". I got a 16Gb mSATA working, but it required some work, enough that I can see potential newcomers being put off, deciding it's all too hard and not worth it.

I got my A600 re-capped, something that was beyond my ability, and another possible stumbling block to anyone who wants to come back as I did.

I got myself a 1Mb upgrade, and even with that, my now 2Mb A600 doesn't get used as much as I'd like to use it, as it barely has 1Mb of Chip RAM available after booting.

And I've discovered that a lot of WHDload games require some fast RAM. So now I'm looking at getting a Furia 020 for a faster CPU and more RAM.

I do also plan on getting a Vampire, which I know has polarised the community, but in all honesty it's one of the things that made me bite the bullet and get an Amiga again.

My A600 has it's Kickstart soldered on, making replacing it with a 3.1 ROM something beyond my ability. And I've also discovered that the poor old Kickstart 37.350 really needs to be replaced, even if I end up using MapROM functionality to load a later kickstart.

As some know, I also decided I wanted to learn to code in C on the Amiga, and that has been a steeper learning curve than I think it should have been. I have found that a lot of assumptions are made about prior knowledge of how the Amiga works, which newcomers such as myself don't have. I honestly thought, in this day and age, with access to the internet, that things would have been a lot easier for someone learning to code on the Amiga than they were in the pre-internet days. That has not been my experience.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are a number of technical issues that anyone deciding to either "come back" to the Amiga, or give it a chance using real hardware, will have to deal with that could potentially make them decide it's too hard. In fact, it it wasn't for AmigaForever and WinUAE, I don't think my A600 would be usable, and that's after I've spent quite a number of hours learning and experimenting, and downloading and installing, and... well you get the picture I'm sure.

Sure, Amiga Forever makes things so much easier for anyone who is happy to use an emulated Amiga, but for anyone who wants to use real hardware, there are some real obstacles that, in my very humble opinion, if some of them could be addressed easily, would prevent people from being put off like I so easily could have been.

It is at least mildly offensive, but bear in mind that the organization in question is simply a small group of people performing a role that they themselves see as justified, if not necessary. I don't lay the blame at the feet of individual greed. There are some who, I am sorry to say, are simply too old and fixed to concretely understand certain ideas. They may not even see themselves as community stewards, as you suggest. For them it may simply be a personal hobby which happens to have legal structure and a trickle of revenue.

There remain a few options:

1. Do nothing and continue bitching ad infinitum.

2. Remember our pirate roots, raise the middle finger high, and proceed with AmigaOS development based on the "leaked" 3.1 sources. This is a beautiful thing, but you will lose a significant number of potential developers in the mix, and you won't be able to do all the comfortable and nice things mentioned in my "GitHub User Story". Also remember that, in this case, certain people will continue paying to legitimize a proprietary approach.

3. Get an answer to the simple question, "Who actually owns AmigaOS?", And proceed, step-by-step, to liberate this motherfucker once and for all, enabling an environment where hundreds of developers can contribute their ideas to the hobby in an open, public manner that is immune to takedown requests and other tomfoolery.

As you can see, unless people en masse snap out of the hallucinationatory grip of intellectual property law, the only possible options are #1, and #3. And I am seriously sick to death of #1 already.

4. contribute to a compatible and legal open source solution till it is better or at least as good as the genuine os in all areas (which in some respects already is the case) and ready to replace it altogether.

you dont need an amiga version of a git client for it. im working with linux crosscompiler, currently gcc 6.1.0 on an ubuntu vmware on windows, and have all linux tools at hand, while i can simply copy over & test the executables under winuae.

nothing simpler than having the whole "amiga" os compiled in one go simply with configure and make. nothing simpler than sharing the work via svn.

i am a complete noob when it comes to programming in either c, c++ or asm. but i have been working now for few days to get fryingpan as contribution compiling for 68k target. and after fixing some warnings along the way it does compile now. likely the diff i have here in front of me is bigger than the changelog for these updated workbench images. i need now to debug it, but it is already partly working. thank god i can recompile for x86 and have even a gdb backtrace.

so. im tired to repeat that, but if you want its all in your hands. you simply need to lift your lower back.

@Modrobert
2. Remember our pirate roots, raise the middle finger high, and proceed with AmigaOS development based on the "leaked" 3.1 sources. This is a beautiful thing, but you will lose a significant number of potential developers in the mix, and you won't be able to do all the comfortable and nice things mentioned in my "GitHub User Story". Also remember that, in this case, certain people will continue paying to legitimize a proprietary approach.

I agree about the middle finger, but the thing is we don't really need any source code to improve Amiga software, there is a proud history of reverse engineering since the dawn of Amiga. In modern times, for example the amazing WHDLoad project adding up to thousands of hours in reverse engineering labor total, with a dedicated team developing installs for the games we love. Many of the game titles are improved upon as well, adding relevant features and compatibility, not just "made to work from hard drive".

The WinUAE emulator which so many other projects rely on, like Amiga Forever to mention one.

There are other great community projects also, like Hall of Light (HOL), which clearly is a labor of love, free for anyone to use, even if not related to reverse engineering in a programming sense, more like detective work.

I could go on mention many more...

Quote:

Originally Posted by wXR

3. Get an answer to the simple question, "Who actually owns AmigaOS?", And proceed, step-by-step, to liberate this motherfucker once and for all, enabling an environment where hundreds of developers can contribute their ideas to the hobby in an open, public manner that is immune to takedown requests and other tomfoolery.

The first place to contact would be Hyperion then, since they admit having the 3.1 source code in their announcement.